Cleopatra, 1838
Type: Sloop ; Steam Frigate (India Service) ;
Launched : 1838 ; Disposal date or year : 14 Apr 1847
Disposal Details : Lost in the Indian Ocean. See below.
Propulsion: Paddle
Notes:

The Cleopatra Steam Frigate
(From the Ceylon Times, 20 July [1847])
By accounts from Bombay to the 9th July, we have gained no intelligence of the fate of this fine steamer, which is now supposed to have foundered with all hands, amounting to about 200 souls, in the same gale which caught our steamer the Seaforth on the 6th of April. The Cleopatra left Bombay on the 14th of April bound for Singapore with 100 convicts for transportation to that settlement. and hesides her crew of seventy Europeans, she had on board a strong guard of Sepoys of the Bombay Marine Battalion placed over the transports on board. Her officers consist (or alas! we fear we must say consisted ) of Captain J. A. Young, Lieutenants Eden and Ralph : Mate, F. W. Nott; Acting Master T. Lawes ; Midshipman J. Sody ; Acting Purser F. G. Crowd ; Clerk in charge J. B. Hadley ; Surgeon J. T. Carr, son to the Venerable Bishop of Bombay.

We have news from Singapore to the 3rd of June. but up to that date an interval of fifty days from her departure from Bombay. we have lead no intimation of her fate. We much fear, therefore. that she must have gone down in the hurricane, and in all probability her fate will for ever remain a sad secret to all. In a stemer there is so little of what is called "top hamper," and so little of moveable articles on deck, with her vast weight of metal below in the engines, boilers, with coal. &c., that in case of loss, either by being thrown on her beam ends, or by other accident, she must sink with everything on board, both animate and inanimate in one instant, without leaving a vestige on the surface to show the world what has become of the gallant ship. Captain Young, in past and happier days, was a personal friend, and we may be allowed to lament the probable loss of one so much beloved by every member of his service. Mild in his demeanour - clever, and experienced in his profession, his early death would be not only a private but a public loss.

Although there is very much to fear about the safety ofthe Cleopatra, still a faint hope is left that she may have been driven disabled to some of the islands to the Bombay. That hope, however, is almost too fragile to cling to. as the south-west winds now prevalent would have brought, either to Ceylon or to the coast, some of the shipwrecked mariners from any of the islands of the Maldive or Laccadive groups on which they may have been cast. The late hurricane blowing from the westward forbids us to hope that the steamer could have run through it and found shelter or wreck on the opposite coast. The Cleopatra was a strong oak-built ship, with her engines in the Clyde; she has been about nine years in India.